The First Ammendment

The First Amendment outlines that there should be a separation of church and state.  One of the reasons that this amendment came about was due to the Baptists and the Anglican church.  During the 1770's, the Baptists came to Virginia to spread their beliefs by preaching.  The Baptists started to draw people away from the Anglican church, which threatened their power and influence.  To prevent this from happening, they required preachers to get a license to preach in the colony.  The problem with this was that the government, which was all Anglican, would only give these licenses to Anglican preachers.  Many Baptists preachers still preached without licenses, which got them thrown in jail.  One Baptist man that got put in jail was John Moore, and he decided to do something about the unfair law.  In October 1776, he brought a petition to the Virginia assembly demanding for the right to preach without persecution, but they needed an advocate to go to court to make their case.  Their advocate was Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson proposed that church and state should be separate.  He dafter a bill stating this, and the bill eventually got passed in January 1786.  This is essentially where the first amendment came from.